


Friends and Monsters

by hollycomb



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Desperation, Dirty Talk, Exhibitionism, M/M, Masks, Office Sex, Reunion Sex, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 20:00:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9623255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: Ren has been away for more than a year. Hux doesn't know where to start.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Друзья и монстры](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13704981) by [Hux_and_Ren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hux_and_Ren/pseuds/Hux_and_Ren), [minty_mix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minty_mix/pseuds/minty_mix)



> This is a sequel to/set in the same verse as [Week Three, Day Two](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6584074), but you can read this fic as a standalone as well!
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Hux is reviewing reports on reconnaissance missions in the Senna system when he gets a priority message from central processing. A ship has requested permission to dock with the _Finalizer_ , unscheduled. It’s an Upsilon-class command shuttle, capable of long range flights but not normally used for them. The pilot’s identity is listed as CLASSIFIED, though the craft itself has a long history of prior arrivals and departures on record with the _Finalizer_. Hux has clearance to open the request and read the details; he removes one glove to apply his fingerprint to the protected content sensor on his workstation. As he’d begun to suspect, when his heart started pounding, the classified-ident pilot is Kylo Ren. 

He closes the request after granting his approval and puts his glove back on. Supreme Leader Snoke gave no indication that Ren would ever be back, and Hux has suppressed the urge to ask during all of their holo conferences, which are lately brief and few in number. He pushes his chair away from his desk and puts his gloved hands on his knees, waiting for his analytical mind to catch up with the messy noise his heartbeat is making within him. The shuttle will be moving into docking position already. Its approach was swift and arrogant, like Ren himself.

If Ren is still like that now, after over a year of completing his training with Snoke. Though Hux shared his bed with Ren for almost five years before this hiatus, Ren never talked specifically about what his training with Snoke had been like when he was young or during any of the intervals when he was called away. Hux suspects that this final round must have been different, after Ren’s defeat at the hands of the scavenger girl. Perhaps it was brutal; by all indications it was far more isolated. The duration alone seems cruel, though Hux might only be projecting. 

Hux stands, and sits again when his knees feel too weak to support his weight. It’s really at his sole discretion whether or not he goes to the shuttle bay to meet his former co-commander. Ren may have already been installed as co-commander again, though that seems like the kind of thing that Snoke might have mentioned, even as obtuse as he’s become. 

Trying to decide if he should get up and go to meet Ren feels like attempting to interpret a language he once spoke but has now forgotten. I’s been so long since he even allowed himself to imagine he’d ever see Ren again. The fact that Hux’s workstation shows Ren’s shuttle has successfully docked, and the corresponding reality that Ren will soon be walking from it and boarding the _Finalizer_ , refuses to work its way past Hux’s disbelief. He sits with his hands clenched tightly over his knees, wondering if Ren will come find him and waiting to find out. If Ren does come, Hux isn’t sure what he'll say and is more than a little afraid of what he might do. He’s imagined dropping to his knees, rubbing his face against Ren’s throat, being put over his desk for a desperate reunion fuck, but all of those are stupid fantasies. They don’t live in a galaxy where those youthful dalliances are worth indulging anymore. Clearly that’s done. 

And yet Ren is here, and the air aboard the ship already feels different. 

Hux’s office looms over the bridge, the front-facing wall composed of transparisteel that is frosted on the lower half, giving him limited privacy when he’s seated at his desk, while the top portion is completely transparent, allowing for observation of the bridge and offering him a continuous sense of presence there throughout his shifts, even when he requires the quiet of this office that seems to float over all that goes on below. The wall that faces the hallway behind the bridge is plain durasteel, thick and sound-proofed, but still Hux feels like he can sense Ren’s approach. If there’s anything to this beyond Hux’s own imagination, he supposes it’s because Ren wants him to know he’s coming. 

He conjures up memories of their last moments together as if reviewing old memoranda in advance of a meeting with colleagues. It had been chaotic, and the twin disasters of Starkiller’s destruction and Ren’s defeat by the scavenger had come in the wake of an unhappy interlude during which they had kept out of each other’s beds mostly due to massive responsibility elsewhere and preparations for what was supposed to be a triumph. Hux hadn’t considered the growing distance between them as something potentially permanent until perhaps Jakku, when Ren seemed more determined to keep away from him entirely than bicker with him over Order business. Hux never lowered himself to asking what had changed between them; he’d assumed it was simply the crescendo of shared and separate stress that was making them short with each other and then so cold that it seemed as if some ghosts of themselves had negotiated the end of their relationship while Hux wasn’t paying attention. Even so, right up to the end, when they were only exchanging bitter words in the presence of Snoke, Hux had assumed that after the firing of Starkiller they would come back together in a hedonistic celebration of their victory, like a fever finally breaking. 

Instead came disgrace. Saving Ren from the surface of Starkiller had involved some desperate clinging during the too-brief moment when they had a bit of privacy in the back of the shuttle that bore them to the _Finalizer_ for Ren’s medical treatments, but it was so resigned and sorrowful that it seemed like something they endured in close proximity of each other but not exactly together. Beaten and bloodied, pale with shock and damp with sweat, Ren had looked into Hux’s eyes in a way that has stayed with Hux throughout the year and thirteen days that Ren has been gone. He’d seemed to be begging for something, desperate and broken and looking to Hux for help. Never talented at giving comfort and so rattled by all that had happened that much of his logical mind had abandoned him, Hux had pressed his face to Ren’s in a futile gesture that made Ren hiss with pain and left a smear of Ren’s blood across Hux’s cheeks when he pulled away, apologizing. Less than two cycles after that, Ren left to complete his training without saying goodbye or even sending a note, sneaking away like a coward while Hux was busy managing the aftermath of their co-failure. 

Five years of sex and semi-cohabitation, of fucking _taking care of each other_ , at least when they could afford to, and it was all undone by the implosion of their respective career aspirations, if Ren’s apprenticeship under Snoke can be called a career. Perhaps to him it’s more of a calling. Perhaps that is why it proved so much more important than whatever he’d had with Hux, in the end. 

But that wasn’t the end, or at least it seems that way when Ren barges into Hux’s office wearing a new mask that resembles the old one except for the lack of silver accents. This mask is pure black, like the helmet it’s attached to, and Ren is otherwise covered from head to toe in his usual heavy black accoutrements, breathing audibly through his new vocoder as Hux’s office door slides shut behind him. 

Hux is on his feet, posture perfect and legs steady enough for now. He secures his command cap over his hair, wishing that he’d thought to slip his greatcoat over his shoulders while he sat in a stupor waiting to see if Ren would appear. 

“So,” Hux says when Ren just stands there staring at him and breathing in his menacing way, hands in fists. “You’re back.” 

“Hux,” Ren says. There’s an angry bite to it and also something reedy, as if he’s ill. Hux wonders what he looks like under the mask now, if Snoke has cut off Ren’s nose or carved another massive gash across his face. The one that the scavenger girl sliced into him was so jarringly final, that day in the snow and upon the shuttle, when Ren looked up at Hux and begged silently for something that Hux couldn’t give. Ren had insisted on being inserted in a bacta tank only from the neck down, so that he could remain conscious. The wound must have scarred up. 

“Snoke has sent you, I presume?” Hux says when Ren seems unwilling to say anything more than his name. The air in the office feels charged, as if Ren is holding everything within some kind of invisible Force-grip, flaunting his ability to crush it all into his fist if he so chooses.

“Yes,”  Ren says. “My training is complete.” 

“Good. That is-- Congratulations. Should I expect a transmission from Supreme Leader? Some new undertaking that we’re to work on together, or--?”

Ren walks forward in his usual rushing stomp, and when he gets close enough to touch Hux takes a step backward, then another. Hux is backed into the corner of his office in this fashion, scowling at Ren even as he wants to rub his face against the smell of him, which is still so familiar, at least this unchanged: singed cloth, secret heat, cracked leather. Hux’s reluctance is a pretense, though also part of an unfamiliar fear of what’s under Ren’s mask and heavy wrappings. He doesn’t know anymore, but still he wants Ren to stay this close. 

“What are you doing?” Hux asks. His heart is slamming, and he exhales with relief when Ren brings one gloved hand to up to his face. But Ren’s touch is not a caress so much as a clinical taunt: he holds Hux’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting his face to one side and then the other as if he’s examining a slave at auction for signs of illness. Hux jerks his chin from Ren’s grip but otherwise cannot move away. Ren has crowded him into the corner like a thundercloud, seeming to block even the light from the room. Hux’s breath feels shallow, though there is no invisible pressure at his throat. 

“So lonely,” Ren says. “I felt it as soon as I stepped aboard. Like a beacon.” 

“What are you talking about? Why are you here, have you been sent to--”

Hux’s voice chokes away when Ren presses his thigh up between Hux’s legs and grinds the firm heat of it against his cock. Ren hums as if in disappointment, maybe because Hux is soft, though he’s quickly hardening as Ren continues with this teasing, insistent pressure, tilting his head and behaving like he’s surveying a property he left behind a year ago, making sure that nothing has rotted or crumbled while he was gone. 

“What’s the matter with you?” Hux asks, actually very glad for this: it’s a sentimental gesture, as crude as they come but kind, too, because it echoes the first time they touched like this, the first time they kissed. Hux had laughed at Ren for being clumsy with his tongue that day, unpracticed. He wishes he could laugh now, but his lungs feel too pinched. “Ah,” he says when Ren looms closer, bearing into him. Ren presses his thigh in high and tight, spreading Hux’s legs wider. Hux glances at the transparisteel wall. Their heads and shoulders might be visible from some of the platforms on the bridge. Something about realizing this makes Hux grab Ren’s arms, not to push him away but to hold him in place like a shield. 

“There,” Ren says when Hux is fully hard against his thigh. Hux’s hips have begun to twitch and his breath is coming audibly faster, face heating. No one has touched him since Ren stopped doing so, well over a year ago now. “There, General. There you are.” 

“I see you’ve-- ah. Gone fully mad.” Hux wants to ask Ren to take off the mask. He tries to peer in past the visor, but this one is completely opaque, revealing nothing to an outside observer. Perhaps Ren doesn’t need conventional eyesight anymore. At the thought that Snoke might have therefore removed Ren’s eyes entirely Hux chokes on a whimper and pinches his own eyes shut. Before he can restrain himself he’s leaning up to kiss the mask. It tastes dirty and feels cold, but Hux kisses it again, swiping his tongue against the unfriendly metal plate that covers Ren’s mouth. There’s a slow exhale of static from the vocoder, just beneath the attention of Hux’s lips. 

“Are you sure I’m the one who’s lost his mind?” Ren asks.

Hux laughs under his breath: that sounds like Ren, at last. 

“Ren,” Hux says, whispering it against the mask. When he opens his eyes he struggles to see beyond Ren’s familiar-but-not disguise again, still afraid to ask him to take it off and reveal whatever’s changed within. In the meantime Hux sees his own reflection in the visor, a distorted strand of red hair and pale skin, everything else dark and indistinct. He remembers that he should be angry about Ren’s departure, the lack of any sort of goodbye that had made Hux rage invisibly with heartbreak for months afterward, but now it almost seems like something wise, like Ren cast a spell by foregoing farewell and it has lead them back to this moment when they can finally pick up where they left off. “Are you here for very long?” Hux asks, pressing his shoulders to the wall in attempt to be at least somewhat dignified, even as he humps himself against Ren’s thigh in subtle but persistent nudges of his hips. 

Rather than answering Hux’s question, Ren turns him around by the shoulders and pushes him face-first into the corner of the wall, slotting his hips up against Hux’s ass in the process. Ren is hard, too: it’s another relief, though Hux doesn’t really understand what’s happening and is beginning to feel groggy from a churning combination of desire and disorientation. It wasn’t like this before Ren left, or at least not often. Hux had always been somehow in control, even when Ren had him pinned to one surface or another. 

“I don’t know how long I’m here,” Ren says. Hux can’t be sure if he sounds frightened or aggressive; either way it feels like Hux just called his bluff. “Snoke described it as a stopover. There were no further details and questions from me were not invited. I’m going to fuck you now. Do you still keep lube in your desk?”

“I-- Yes.” Hux glances at the window onto the bridge again. If Ren bent him over his desk, they would be concealed below the frosted portion, but the motion of it might still be visible and obvious enough. “We could wait, Ren, we could--” 

“You don’t want to wait and neither do I. Have you learned nothing in the past year? There’s no time to waste.” 

Ren turns toward the desk, the hot bulge of his cock still lodged firmly against Hux’s ass as he uses the Force to open the locked bottom drawer where Hux began keeping lubricant after Ren made it a habit to barge into his office and wind him up like this. Only it was different back then: the mask would come off right away, Ren would smirk and make jokes, murmur into Hux’s ear about how shameful it would be if they were caught, if some unthinking officer overrode clearance for an emergency and walked in to find Ren’s cock deep inside the splayed General, Hux’s legs spread wide around Ren while he took it. 

Hux is glad Ren didn’t move away from him to fetch the lube, whereas he used to roll his eyes at this sort of showmanship. Now it seems crucial: Hux might be out of his mind, with lust and loneliness and whatever else, but he feels properly hidden with Ren behind him like this, cast into a shadow world where no one can see them or what’s about to happen. 

Ren yanks at Hux’s belt with one hand, still wearing his gloves as he squirms his fingers in past Hux’s opened fly and feels him, first through his underwear and then bare, shoving his hand inside. Hux makes horribly undone noises and presses his cheek to the wall, thrusts into Ren’s grip and back against the heat of his cock. 

“Your need of this,” Ren says, stroking his thumb over the head and rubbing circles through the precome gathering there, teasing warm leather against the slit. “It permeates the entire ship.” 

Hux scoffs. “Maybe in your view. _Ah_. Few others here are concerned with my, my--” 

“Your physical body?” Ren squeezes Hux’s cock. An embarrassing, startled sound tumbles out of Hux at the pressure, the strength of Ren’s hand. “Mhm. Maybe. Some would have you and keep it secret. You always saw me as the only option.” 

“Oh, do leave me a list of additional options when you go, then. That would be, s-so appreciated, _nhn_ , Ren--”

“Let’s see what you’ve been up to,” Ren says, tugging down the back of Hux’s pants and underwear in one swift yank. “Or should I say, what’s been up here?”

Hux sputters with laughter, thrusting his ass back for Ren’s big hands, letting him conduct his examination. “Are you jealous?” he asks, half-turning, his cheek still pressed to the wall. “Of my synthetics? Using the Force to read my recent history, to see which ones I’ve been favoring?” 

Ren doesn’t laugh, which is a disappointment. They both used to have a laugh now and again at the expense of the other’s self-care in their absence. Hux turns his face against the wall and gasps as quietly as he can when Ren pulls his cheeks apart and just breathes for a bit, presumably staring. It’s cool in the office and Hux’s hole is trying to twitch shut as Ren strains the rim just open with his grip. Hux shivers at the first dry pass of Ren’s gloved thumb, and again when Ren presses in to give him just the slightest rub, barely a flinch of friction and already Hux feels like he’ll splatter the wall of his office with come any moment now. It’s so different, submitting to someone else’s touch, and so good with Ren that Hux never entertained anything but his synthetics once Ren was gone. Better to be disappointed alone than with some expectant or expensive company. 

“Tight,” Ren says when he tests the pad of his thumb against Hux’s hole. The word sounds impersonal through the vocoder, like a clipped response to a stormtrooper’s request for clarification on a mission parameter. 

“Were you expecting me to have caught me after a pre-shift, ah. Indulgence?” 

Hux saves those for the the hours just before his rest cycle, and only a few times a week, if that. Stroking himself off to memories of being fucked is more efficient, and less depressing in the aftermath. Something about cleaning his synthetics in the sink after he uses them is so demoralizing, when no one waits for him to return to the bed. 

Ren puts the lubricant on this gloved thumb, which makes Hux worry for the state of Ren’s hands. Have they been burned beyond recognition, does he not want Hux to see? It’s an overreaction: they’ve done this with gloves on plenty of times, sometimes even in the comfort of their private rooms. Still, he can’t resist a question that is probably not wise, even as the tip of Ren’s slicked thumb breaches him, feeling larger than ever because of the extra padding of the glove. 

“Your need of this permeates just as much, I’m sure,” Hux says, wiggling back onto the intrusion already. It burns, _stars_ , and the burn is so good. “You, ah, you-- Were, what? Chained to a wall in his dungeon? Meditating yourself into true obedience?” 

Hux was hoping to irritate Ren into some rough treatment with that, but Ren is moving so slowly, even as his breath thickens through the vocoder, his thumb disappearing into the sucking heat of Hux’s body. Hux moans and closes his eyes, jams his face into the corner of the wall. The durasteel against his cheeks feels warmer already, as if it’s actually absorbing the heat on his face. He imagines someone on the bridge noticing a dark figure in the corner of his office, and just a hint of the General's hair as his command cap tips forward to expose the back of his head. The thought makes him wild with shame and reckless even so. He clenches hard around Ren’s thumb when it feels like it’s all in, wanting it to hurt, not sure if he’s trying to make this painful for himself or for Ren. 

Ren laughs, low and menacing, when Hux shuffles his legs apart, still trapped by his pants from the thighs down and prevented from spreading wider. 

“Needed this,” Ren says, fucking Hux much too slowly with the drag of his thumb. 

“You or me?” 

Ren doesn’t answer, just withdraws his thumb and rubs it around Hux’s loosened hole, spreading lube onto the rim. It was a stupid question, anyway: they’ve both always been on the same page when it comes to their sheer physical need, discounting those months just before Starkiller fired, when Ren was suddenly above it all, devoted solely to Snoke and to the delusional pursuit of his dead grandfather’s dreams.  

Hux dares a glance at the transparisteel, at the bridge. Ren is slicking his cock, keeping close like a shroud around him, and nobody seems to be looking their way, but even the brisk movement of officers here and there on the lower level, obscured by the frosted glass, makes Hux curse under his breath and press back against Ren all at once. 

“I know,” Ren says. 

“What do you know.” 

“How much you think you deserve humiliation. How it excites you to think of them seeing you as you really are.” 

Hux elbows Ren in protest and huffs against the wall. “Figures, you saying I deserve humiliation. Since you were complicit in the biggest one of my life.” 

“I didn’t say I agree that you deserve it. Only that you think so, and it arouses you, the thought of baring yourself to it.” 

And then Ren’s cockhead is pressing in, making Hux remember what his own body can do, how he can open and burn and feel like he might break while still wanting more. Hux tries again to spread his legs more widely as he opens his mouth against the wall. His hands are on the wall, too, scrabbling at nothing, and he whines with a kind of gratitude when Ren brings his up to cover them, still gloved. The burn is intense as Ren slides deeply into him, almost too intense after so much time without this. Hux’s heart slams against his ribcage; he can feel himself starting to sweat under his uniform. When his fingers twitch, Ren flattens his hot, gloved palms over them. 

Ren’s breath is harsh behind Hux’s ear, through the vocoder. His cock is a firebrand inside Hux, and it keeps coming, opening him wide and sinking in so deep. Hux would murder anyone who turned up to stop them now, would only glare at anyone who might look in at them through the transparisteel. He needs this, needs it deeper still, needs to be fucked as hard as Ren can manage in this position. They’re pressed to the wall like thieves who are hoping to remain unnoticed as they steal this from their real lives, for themselves. 

“Ah,” Ren says, finally, when he’s all in, motionless except for the heaving of his massive chest as it comes to rest against Hux’s back and the throbbing pulse of his balls, snug against Hux’s stretched open hole. “Good, General, that’s-- That’s good.” He shunts into Hux shallowly, pulling a cracked little exclamation from him. “You take me so well,” Ren says. “Not just here--” He trails one hand along Hux’s arm to his shoulder and then over his side, reaches down to cup Hux’s ass and finally feels his way around his straining, stretched-open rim. “But here, too,” Ren says, and he covers Hux’s forehead with his other hand. “Your mind. How you turn it over to this. Such a busy, frantic landscape, your thoughts always racing. And it’s all mine when I’m inside you. Just like that.” 

“Fuck,” Hux says, because he can’t think of anything better, can’t really think at all. It’s a kind of command, though he doesn't really want Ren to get on with it. Not yet. The shape of him is overwhelming, his size both within and without, as is the fire-bright, insistent pull at Hux’s attention, preventing Hux from retreating into himself even as he gives over to the pleasure of shifting his hips back, letting his breath come loud and sharp through his parted lips. Ren is holding him so precisely where he wants him. He walked in here like he owns the place, like he owns Hux, and pressed himself all the way into Hux’s body, his mind. Hux should hate him for it, should have built up at least some paltry resistance to this after going a whole year without it, but he’s never been so grateful for anything. He has never so badly wanted to be invaded, spread, shown that he can’t hide from everyone in his office, on his ship, under his greatcoat. There is one person, still, just as before, who can expose him and leave him laid bare even while he’s wearing most of his clothes. 

He’s wide open for Ren, taking him, his muscles beginning to melt as Ren’s arm snakes around his waist to support his weight. Ren’s other hand is still pressed to Hux’s forehead, and Hux whines softly when it slides down to rest against his throat, Ren’s fingers pressing in like a warning. Hux swallows against Ren’s grip and lowers his shaking hands from the wall, reaching back to take random handfuls of Ren’s garments. 

_Stay_ , Hux thinks, knowing Ren will hear it, feel it. _Right here, just there, don’t move. Don’t stop, don’t go_.

“Don’t move,” Ren repeats, making Hux shiver with the eviscerating sense of being seen, really known and pinned beneath the weight of this scrutiny. “Mhm. You want me to stand here like this for the rest of your shift? Inside you, motionless? Listening to you gasp and watching you shiver in your boots?”

“I’m not-- It’s not--” 

“I think you’d rather get fucked.” Ren gives Hux’s throat a squeeze as he says so, slowly, and releases his grip just as slowly. Hux gasps, burns and twitches, chews his lips to try to keep quiet. “You can keep my come inside you for the rest of your shift,” Ren says. “Let it seep down after I’m done with you, inside your neatly buttoned uniform, helping you remember how I used you right here, in view of your bridge. That, I will give you.” 

“Get on with it, then,” Hux says, trying to claw some self-respect back even now. “I’m surprised you, you haven’t come already. I assumed you’d been instructed not to touch that monstrous thing during your _sacred_ training.” 

“You understand so little. Maybe I fucked hundreds of others as part of my training. All species, even the ones you find most revolting. Maybe my cock is still wet from the last person I plunged it into.” 

Hux goes tense and pulls his arms to his chest, his ass clenching up around Ren’s cock even as the prospect of what Ren said horrifies him. Ren laughs in a burst of static through the vocoder. 

“Relax, General,” he says, squeezing Hux’s throat more tightly, like an admonishment. “Your assumption was correct. I was hardly in my own body for much of my training. And now, to be back inside yours--” Ren makes a low growling sound and shunts his hips forward. Hux manages to keep quiet but tightens around him again, this time in a greedy pull, begging for more. “It’s like a homecoming,” Ren says. He strokes the side of Hux’s neck with his thumb. “You still fit me so well.” 

“I forgot how much you like the sound of your own voice.” 

“I prefer the sound of yours.” Ren pulls out in a long drag, lighting up the nerves on Hux’s rim as he tightens his grip on Hux’s throat. “So let’s hear it. Tell me how much you like that cock inside you. How much you missed it.” 

Ren goes still when he’s holding Hux open with only the head of his cock, waiting for a performance. Hux grimaces, truly hating Ren now. He’d forgotten how fast it can set upon him, this feeling of helpless need, and how Ren has ruined him with it. 

“Please,” Hux grinds out, eyes closed against the brim of his command cap, which is smashed between his face and the wall. “Ren-- You know. You know me. Don’t fucking pretend. Give me what I-- _ah_!”

Hux cries out again and nods in gratitude when Ren starts pounding him in sharp slaps of his hips. He’s not thrusting as deeply as Hux would like, but it’s more than enough after so long without this. The whipping pace of it is enough to get Hux close, and he reaches for his cock, not getting very far before both his arms are yanked behind his back and held there. Ren’s hands are still on his throat and waist; he’s using the fucking Force to keep Hux from pumping his dick. 

“You’re like a sniveling little boy,” Ren says, the words through his vocoder seeming to singe the rim of Hux’s ear. “Grabbing at yourself, no patience. Crying on my cock and trying to spread your legs wider for me. Look at you, falling apart while in uniform. Again.”

Hux grits his teeth and clenches hard around Ren, hissing with pleasure and with rage as Ren fucks him harder, faster. _Again_ , Hux thinks, pulling at the restraint on his arms and getting nowhere. He’s going to have bruises on his neck; Ren is so fucking reckless. Hux is dizzy from shortness of breath, the need to come. Ren grazes his prostate in clumsy blows and holds him just far enough from the wall so that he can’t rub his cock against it for even minimal relief. 

“What if I left you with my come inside you and your cock still so full?” Ren’s voice is breaking up. He’s close, his thrusts growing erratic and his grip on Hux’s throat dangerously tight. “Hm? You’d let me do that, wouldn’t you? You’d sit at your desk and stare down at your aching dick with your hands on your thighs, you’d leave that greedy little prick tucked inside your pants and hurting for release. You’d wait, if I asked you to. Right? Hux?”

“Fuck you,” Hux says weakly, gasping, and only then does Ren seem to realize that he’s nearly choked Hux’s breath away entirely. Ren moves his hand from Hux’s throat and down to his cock, brushing leather fingertips against him in infuriating teases even as he starts to slam himself into Hux in full-body thrusts, grunting and panting through the vocoder. The slap of his sweaty balls against Hux’s body is loud, filthy. If Hux could just get one good grip on himself he’d come. 

“Hope they’re watching,” Ren says, meaning people on the bridge. Hux is so out of his mind that he hopes so, too. “Want them to see it when you, _ah_ , when-- When you scream for me, when you come on my dick.” 

“Touch me,” Hux says, begging now, beyond caring. He throws his head back, feels his command cap fall off and tumble over Ren’s shoulder while Ren continues plunging into him like he wants to ruin him again, again, just to make sure he can keep doing it, over and over. “Please, please, Ren-- I need--” 

“What do you need, Hux, what? More than this? More and more and more, you’d let me pull your bones out right now, you’d, you’d let me--”

“Ren, _please_ , oh please, I’m so, I’m close, please--”

“So weak for this.” 

Ren grabs Hux’s cock and pumps him hard, pulling a choked-off scream out of him just before his orgasm hits. Hux makes high-pitched noises of relief as he empties himself onto the wall of his office, Ren’s hand still working on him. He whines and drops his head back onto Ren’s shoulder, tries to breathe and hiccups in surprise when Ren slams him against the wall as he comes, burying Hux under the weight of his orgasm, hips still working into him in shallow thrusts. Hux lets himself be buried, filled. He pants against the wall, leaving drool marks on it. 

“I meant it,” Ren says. He’s breathing heavily through the vocoder. It sounds almost painful, and Hux worries again about the state of Ren’s body under all this drapery, under the mask. 

“Meant what?” Hux asks. He turns his bleary gaze on the transparisteel wall. There’s no indication that they were seen by anyone on the bridge, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. 

“Keep my come inside you,” Ren says, his voice already partially recovered. Hux can feel the grill of Ren’s mask against the back of his ear. It’s cold, while the rest of Ren is humid with warmth against him, even through his clothes. “I will find you later. You’d better still have my spend inside you when I do. I want you unclean for the rest of your shift. You can wipe your own pathetic spurts off the wall, but your ass stays filthy and slick for me.” 

“Fine,” Hux says, laughing low in his chest. Ren is still so hard inside him. Hux feels ready to sink to the floor, to curl up there with his pants shoved down and Ren’s come slopping out onto his thighs while Ren stands over him watching. “Fine, Ren, but. You’ll owe me one. A favor. If I do that for you.” 

Ren scoffs and pulls out, taking his time in a way that probably means he’s savoring the sight of his cock slipping from Hux’s well-used, come-soaked hole. 

“A favor,” he says. “Right. Like that’s not what I just did for you.” 

“I mean it,” Hux says, and he reaches back to put his hand over himself. He holds Ren’s come inside him as best he can, clenching up around the wet, gaping feeling his cock left behind. When he looks back at Ren to see if he’s appreciating this he realizes that he was expecting a glimpse of Ren’s actual face, though he didn’t exactly manage to forget the mask. “Later,” Hux says, tugging up his pants with his other hand. “I’ll be asking something of you.” 

“We’ll see.” Ren tucks himself back into his dark layers. “That’s right,” Ren says, watching Hux fasten his own pants. “Get yourself back in order, General. Put your disguise back on.”

Hux snorts. “My disguise? That’s rich, coming from you.” 

They stare at each other, Hux’s unasked questions hanging in the air between them, as present as the smell of sex: _Why hasn’t the mask come off, why, is it just one of your games or is something wrong, Ren, what happened, what did he do to you--_

Ren turns to go, his cape swirling behind him. He leaves the office without saying another word. Hux stands shaking and flushed, trying to get his rumpled tunic tucked back into his pants. He can feel Ren’s come sliding down into his underwear despite his efforts to clench up around it. There’s so much. Hux will be soaked as soon as he sits at his desk. 

He walks to the transparisteel wall and observes the bridge, smoothing his hair down. He needs to clean his come off the other wall, needs to do something about the flush on his face, needs to recover his thought process after having his brains fucked out by a faceless phantom who has arrived on his ship with no warning. He almost wants to put on the intercom to the bridge and ask: Did you see him, too? Did that really happen? 

The evidence left in his ass is more than enough, and he’s sore when he sits again. For the remainder of his shift he tries to concentrate on his work with little success. His hole feels itchy and raw, and he fidgets in his seat, blushing every time a twinge of soreness or a slimy new pool of Ren’s come makes his cock twitch inside his damp, ruined briefs. It’s not that he’s afraid to disobey Ren’s instructions, to slip back to his room to clean himself and get on with his day. It’s just that he doesn’t want to break the spell, to dispose of the evidence, or to wake up from this strange dream of his alternate, sloppy, starkly alive self that Ren can still lead him into. 

**

By the time he’s headed back to his quarters for his off cycle, Hux is deeply uncomfortable. Physically, because there is a swamp of half-dried come in his ass and underwear, and also mentally. There was no reason to completely roll over for Ren the way he did in his office. No amount of loneliness or secret detachment from his own life should result in such irresponsible behavior, and especially when he’s still technically on probation, living out the days of his post-Starkiller career only by the grace of Supreme Leader’s cold mercy. 

He analyzes his idiocy on the walk back to his rooms, which has never felt so long or crowded with onlookers, and by the time he reaches his door he’s decided that what happened in his office is some kind of remnant of his long-lost hope that once Starkiller was successfully fired he was going to reunite with Ren for raucous, celebratory sex. That never happened, and Hux’s dashed expectations festered, leading to what just occurred and to the current situation in Hux’s underwear. Now that his head has cleared, he plans to clean himself up, to hell with Ren’s taunting instructions. They don’t have that kind of relationship anymore, and in fact they never really did. Hux usually left their encounters feeling satisfied, seen to, understood to some degree. Now he just feels angry, dirty, confused, and like he should probably brace himself for Ren to depart again without warning or a word of explanation spared for Hux.  

Inside his quarters, he shrugs off his greatcoat as he heads into his bedroom. Something feels off: the air has that charged feeling, and it’s not just his low boiling rage. He powers the lights on in and scowls at Ren: still masked, fully dressed and straddling the chair at Hux’s personal workstation. 

“You continue to keep a desk in your bedroom,” Ren says. “Against my advice.”

“Fuck your advice. What are you doing here?” Hux is actually enormously relieved, which he couldn’t have expected, though maybe it makes sense considering his earlier behavior. He’s obviously become desperate for attention. It’s shameful; he would have sought out a replacement for Ren if he’d realized it had gotten this bad. 

Ren watches Hux take off his command cap and put it away with his greatcoat. His breathing again sounds too loud, like that of a person whose lung capacity has diminished after some mishap or illness. Hux wonders what sort of noises Ren will make through that thing when he sees that Hux’s ass is still a mess. 

“What have you been up to?” Hux asks, meaning aboard the _Finalizer_ for the past three hours, though if Ren wants to tell him about his training, the entire past year they spent apart, Hux is willing to listen.

“Just reacquainting myself with the ship.”

“Ah. So I should expect some damage reports in my evening review?”

“No, General. I don’t waste my energy like that anymore. I conserve my rage for battle. It’s of more use to me when it’s stored, not released.”  

“Have you experienced rage since returning to my ship?” 

“Our ship.” 

“Says who? I haven’t gotten any holo calls from Snoke--” 

“It’s ours.” Ren stands and shoves the chair away. The gesture makes Hux suspect that Ren hasn’t actually mastered his random displays of rage. “Just like your bones and your blood and your wrecked ass. Ours. Belongs to both of us. Get on the bed, face down.” 

Hux sighs as if this is tedious. Already his heart is beating faster, and he imagines Ren has scented this on him, along with a variety of other things. He’s out of practice when it comes to the ease of letting himself feel things around Ren, because Ren will end up sensing them anyway. Even when Hux was smug and self-assured, being with Ren has always been about giving things up, letting them go. He unbuttons his tunic and throws it at Ren. 

“Are you going to undress as well?” Hux desperately wants a shower, and wants Ren to stand under the hot water with him, fully exposed. When Ren’s hair gets wet his ears become visible and he looks so different, not worse and certainly not better but younger and more human. That is: if he still has ears, eyes, anything but a second grisly mask under there. 

“Get on the bed,” Ren says again, not moving to take off even his gloves. 

Hux could put up some pretense of a fight against whatever Ren has in mind, but he’s tired of fighting and even more tired of pretense. If he has Ren back for some limited amount of time, he’d rather surrender to the charms of his powerful old friend and obnoxiously over-sized bedmate, as long as he doesn’t have to suffer the company of that cold ghoul who’d dismissed him so easily in the run-up to their shared disgrace. Even if Ren wears the ghoul’s face now, his body is warm under all that armor.

“Did you know?” Hux asks when he’s stretched out on the bed, face down with his back to Ren, his chin resting on his folded arms and his ass stinging anew as he tries to find a comfortable position. 

“Know what?” Ren asks. 

“Did you get a sense of my forthcoming failure, just before we lost Starkiller? Is that why you-- You tried to distance yourself from it?” _From me_.

“I didn’t come here to talk about the past.” 

Ren pulls off Hux’s left boot, then the right. Hux winces against the bedsheets, beginning to dread the moment when Ren sees that Hux has done as he asked and kept himself dirty, waiting, surrendered to this for as long as he can keep it. He shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t be doing any of this, but the alternative is not doing it, and he’s had over a year of that to demonstrate that this is better, humiliation and all. 

“You’re diminished,” Ren says, tugging Hux’s belt off. “Like a ship that needs servicing. Running on fumes.” 

“What else am I supposed to run on? Do you see any other sources of energy around here?”

Ren doesn’t answer, just pulls Hux’s pants down. Hux lifts his hips to assist, feels his underwear going down with his pants and then feels Ren’s eyes on him. His face heats when Ren spreads him open to observe the remainder of their fucking, the mess he made.   

“Good.” Ren swallows, or makes some other kind of sound that’s mostly obscured by the vocoder. He thumbs at Hux’s hole and exhales when Hux moans. “Does it hurt?” he asks.

“What-- No, not really, but it’s uncomfortable. Ren, what’s the point of this, why are you--”

“Get up. You need maintenance. Like a ship.” 

Hux rolls over and groans. He sits up on his elbows, half hard now and wearing nothing but his twisted undershirt. Ren stares. He’s breathing audibly, agitated. He points toward the fresher. 

“In there,” he says. “I’m going to fix this.” 

“Fix what? Me?”

“Enough questions. Go.”

“Fine,” Hux says, because he wants a shower anyway. If Ren has some other plan for him in the fresher, Hux will finally put a stop to this game, which has begun to feel like it’s only really a countdown to the moment when Hux inevitably asks why Ren hasn’t taken the mask off. He tugs his shirt over his head and turns back to Ren when he’s in the fresher’s doorway, fully naked, then moves toward the shower.

Ren is swiftly upon him: still clothed, still wearing the mask. Hux lets himself be gathered against the scratchy fabrics of Ren’s tunic and cloak, his leggings already bulging with an erection. Ren holds Hux against him with a strange protective urgency, like one might clutch a child to keep him from running into transport traffic. He reaches into the shower with his other hand and turns on the water, adjusting the temperature so that it steams. Ren used to laugh at how brightly Hux’s skin blushed when they showered together. Hux had taken it as a kind of compliment, whatever Ren’s intentions were. It had been amusing, a novelty, even comforting, to have someone notice a thing like that about him: such a small thing, so petty and private, something Hux had assumed only he would ever know about himself.  

“Bend over,” Ren says, shoving Hux into the shower. “Hands around your ankles.” 

“I’m too tired for--” 

“Shut up and do it. You’re not tired. You’ve been asleep on your feet for over a year. Now you’re awake. Grab your ankles, General.” 

Ren is right about Hux having sleepwalked through the past year and thirteen days, so Hux does as he instructed, though it tugs painfully at his back and makes his ass feel too open, crusted with Ren’s come and frankly disgusting. Ren makes a noise that is somewhere between approving and judgemental. He’s judging Hux harshly for doing as he says, perhaps, and for liking it so much. Hux laughs under his breath when Ren spreads him open so that warm water will blast directly onto his hole. Ren is still wearing his gloves.

“Suddenly you’re afraid of exposing yourself to me?” Hux asks, feeling his cock get heavier as the pressure from the water begins to feel good. “Even a little?”

Ren doesn’t respond. He cleans Hux in silence, drawing soft gasps from him. Hux’s head begins to feel light from being pointed toward the floor, all the blood rushing there and also to his cock. Ren’s gloved fingers rub and press into his hole, soaped up and working with clinical determination. His touch is neither rough nor caring. 

“You kept me in you all day,” Ren says when he’s got his thumb in Hux’s ass, scraping at his walls as if looking for the drops he might have missed. It stings, drags against Hux’s sore rim, and the intrusive, demanding pressure is so good, so greedy and right, that Hux considers grabbing his cock and jerking off onto the shower floor, though he doubts Ren would allow it. 

“Am I properly serviced yet?” Hux asks. “My back hurts.” 

“Stand up.” 

Hux does so with a groan and stumbles backward a bit as he tries to regain his balance, his vision going spotty. When he blinks his eyes clear he sees Ren tugging his boots off, then removing his gloves. Hux holds his breath, watching, and he exhales as quietly as he can when he sees that Ren’s hands aren’t burned, excessively scarred, or replaced by synthetics. He supposes he should have known they were at least still Ren’s original hands, considering how warm they felt even through his gloves. 

“Revealing yourself at last?” Hux says, reaching for the soap while Ren removes his cloak. The shower’s stall door is hanging open, and water is spraying out into the fresher as it bounces off of Hux’s body, dampening Ren with a fine mist while he peels down his leggings. “I see you still don’t bother with underwear,” Hux says. His heart is lifting, ballooning, becoming overlarge with premature relief. He knows he should take a pin to it and stop its foolish inflation before it can wither organically in disappointment, but when it comes to Ren he’s never been able to do that. 

Ren takes everything off but the helmet, and with his clothes shed everywhere the floor of Hux’s refresher looks like the surface of a black pond that Ren is standing upon. His breathing is labored through the vocoder, and his cock is hard, presumably from the sight of Hux and from having ministered to his ass under the water. There are new scars, their bacta-healed remains unable to really convey the graveness of the injuries Ren had when Hux dragged him off Starkiller. The one on his side has a fascinating texture, by the looks of it. Hux wants to put his hand there, and everywhere. He’d pressed his hand there when the wound was fresh, bloody and ringed with torn cloth. He had to throw that pair of gloves away, after Ren was gone. 

“Are you going to get in with me?” Hux asks, pretending that he isn’t terrified by Ren’s hesitation to show his face. “Is that where this is leading? I hope you have a plan, Ren. I’m really just following your lead here.” 

“You like that.” Ren sounds angry about it, putting more punch from the vocoder into his voice than is necessary. “Letting someone else make the decisions. Turning yourself over to fate. You get off on it.” 

“Not in most cases, but when it comes to the care and maintenance of my ass, sure. Coming in or not? Hurry up and decide. Your things are getting soaked.” 

“You act as if no time has passed at all.” 

“You’re the one who reached for my crotch straight away. Fine, though. Stand out there naked with your mask like a child, staring at me. I’m beginning to think you don’t have a plan. If you’re trying to goad me into telling you what to do, you can fuck right off. I’m through with that lost cause.” 

Hux hears his voice rising and stops talking. There’s never any reward for letting Ren see him get visibly worked up, beyond maybe an orgasm, but somehow what’s going on right now isn’t quite sex. He grabs for the shower stall door and tries to close it. It’s no surprise when he can’t. Ren is holding it open with the Force. 

“Remember, though,” Hux says, letting his hands fall to his sides, giving up on the door. Giving up, giving in. “You owe me a favor. I did as you asked, now-- Now you’ve got to do as I say.” 

No response from Ren. He knows what Hux will ask for. 

“The helmet, why-- Take it, off, Ren. I don’t care. I don’t. Just let me see.” 

It’s a lie, that Hux doesn’t care. He’d rather remember Ren’s face the way it was, obscured forever by this mask, if Snoke has changed it in some gruesome way. In his clandestine, fevered research about the Force, Hux found stories about a person’s eyes turning yellow if he strays too deep into the dark side. He keeps his own face perfectly still as he watches Ren reach for the clasps on the helmet. It’s not that he needs Ren to be beautiful; he never was. But he was something better than that, secretly, under his armor.

Ren removes the helmet in one smooth motion, and Hux finds himself waiting for something that doesn’t come: for Ren’s long hair to fall down around his ears, swiftly covering them. But it’s gone. His hair has been shorn down to a soft, sad fuzz, like the fur of a baby animal, and his ears are fully exposed without it, along with the scar that bisects his face, his raging eyes and flaring nostrils, the slight quiver of his chin.

Hux holds Ren’s gaze, searching for a flicker of yellow in his eyes and finding only familiar muddy hazel with gold burning behind it, a backlight of coppery anger protecting some barely hidden old sorrow. Hux’s relief comes slowly, hobbled by a disproportionate sense of loss. There’s the impulse to laugh uproariously at Ren’s vanity, that this was what he was so determined to hide, a bad haircut that makes him look like a refugee monk with monstrous ears, which maybe he is, by some imprecise definition. Hux can’t even manage a grin. It’s not as funny as it once would have been. 

“I was instructed to shave it,” Ren says, and his shoulders jump, maybe at the sound of his own voice. Hux wonders when he last spoke without the vocoder. “It was part of a ritual. The completion of my training, to symbolize--”

“Come here,” Hux says. “Ren, fucking-- Come here.” 

Ren makes a huffing sound of protest even as he launches himself into Hux’s arms. The bulk of him feels so different without his clothes: more present and immediate and more dangerous. He pulls Hux against him as if he hopes to amalgamate their bodies, squeezing the breath from him. Behind him, the shower door slams shut, closing them into this sanctuary. As if there might otherwise be witnesses; as if anyone who looked at them now could actually see what’s passing between them. 

“All right, Ren, all right,” Hux says in whispers, only half-aware that he’s speaking, his lips moving against Ren’s temple and then his ear. He rubs his face against Ren’s smooth cheek and dares to push his fingertips up through the short hairs at the back of Ren’s neck. Ren shivers, his arms still crushed around Hux’s back. He’s tightening his grip on Hux in little pulses, jamming their chests together and holding Hux so close that he can feel Ren’s suffocating desperation in his organs, in his gut and lungs and veins. Hux would give Ren his bones, it’s true. He’d stay here, like this, listening to his ribs crack. Ren’s rests his shorn head on Hux’s shoulder, his spiky fringe tickling Hux’s neck. 

They touch each other again like thieves, though this is different from the thieving they did in Hux’s office. That was more like stealing time and space, and this is the theft of something greater, everything paused around them for the taking. It’s careful, as if there are alarms under their skin that might be tripped, and dreamlike, the slide of Ren’s hands on Hux’s wet skin almost timid with wonder: over his shoulder blades, down to the small of his back, the curve of his ass, the soft high insides of his thighs. Hux mouths at Ren’s big shoulders, bites softly at his neck. They’re both hard, moving against each other in a rhythmless grind. Hux opens his hand over the massive scar on Ren’s side and drags his thumb across its texture, listening to the way Ren’s breath changes. Finally, after a lot of this, they pull back to look at each other. 

“I haven’t seen it,” Ren says. He lowers his eyes, water-damp lashes brushing his cheeks. 

“It?”

“The--” Ren’s nose twitches, and Hux realizes he means his hair, his face, this new self. 

“Don’t worry,” Hux says. He touches the scar, brushing his fingertips against the thickest slice along Ren’s jaw and upward, so close to the inside corner of his eye, across the bridge of his nose. “They’re not yellow,” Hux says when he meets Ren’s eyes again. 

Ren frowns, then seems to understand. “How did you know, that’s--” 

“Oh, so it’s true? That can happen?”

Hux didn’t mean to sound so concerned. If Ren hasn’t lost himself yet-- But it wouldn’t be wise to assume this interlude means some things can be kept. Snoke’s eyes aren’t yellow, but they’re also not eyes so much as traps, sucking vacancies, accusations. 

Ren kisses the highest point of Hux’s left cheek, then his jaw, avoiding his mouth. He licks at the rising bruises he left on Hux’s neck and moves down, lowering to his knees as he sucks new bruises into the tenderest skin on Hux’s belly. Hux pushes both hands into Ren’s hair when Ren laps at the base of his cock. Ren’s hair is at least long enough to stand up between Hux’s fingers, and it must have been growing back for half a year, if it was once entirely gone. 

“You taste--” Ren says, but then he moans instead of trying to fit any words to it. He takes Hux fully into his mouth, working his tongue and then his throat, gagging a little when Hux’s hips roll forward. 

“Out of practice,” Hux says, breathless and with delight, trying to grab a handful of Ren’s hair. It’s impossible, so he digs his short nails in against Ren’s scalp instead, gasping when Ren squeezes his ass with both hands, one thumb sneaking in toward Hux’s hole as he bobs his head. “Glutton,” Hux says, laughing. He lets his head fall back, eyes half-lidded as he gazes up at the fresher’s ceiling through his trembling lashes. “How did you, how, ah-- How did you survive without this?”

He’s talking to himself, and when he comes in Ren’s mouth it feels like an answer. _How did you survive without this?_ In stasis, in a portable holding cell shaped around his bones, and barely. 

Ren holds Hux by his hips while he lolls in the aftermath, nearly toppling backward against the shower’s wall. When he's capable of balance again, Hux drags his fingers through Ren’s wrecked hair and watches droplets of water flick out as the spikes resettle. 

_He did this to hurt you_ , Hux thinks. 

“It was the least painful part of my training,” Ren says. “You forget. You were made great by pain, too.” 

“I thought I was.” 

But it’s true that he would have been less without his instructive suffering, less even than the architect of a weapon that only fired once.

His come shines at the corner of Ren’s lips, just a drop that wasn’t swallowed with the rest. Ren looks so naked without his hair. You’re diminished, Hux thinks, but then he wants to take it back and hopes Ren didn’t hear that particular thought. Ren settles back onto his heels, spreading his thighs and showing Hux his cock. When he touches himself it’s like he’s worshipping Hux, performing this ritual at his feet as water courses down over them. Hux puts his fingertips against Ren’s temples, touching him only lightly, as if he’s sacred in this posture. 

Ren’s fist moves faster on his cock, a certain kind of flush spreading high across his cheeks. It’s faint, easy to miss, especially in the humid shower stall, but Hux knows it well. 

“And who do you belong to?” Hux asks, though it’s not the right thing to say, not hot or clever or well-placed within this moment. He cups Ren’s unscarred cheek and tilts his face up, feels Ren’s jaw click against his palm. “You’ll always be able to slot yourself right into me, Ren, you know that. But who gets to keep you? How much of what’s left do I get to have?” 

“Hux--” 

“Shh, just show me. Put it on the floor, at my feet. Spill yourself out, let me see.” 

Ren groans and presses his face to Hux’s belly as he empties his cock onto the floor of the shower, his mouth and eyelashes smashed against Hux’s skin with a kind of brutish entitlement that’s also delicate, trembling. He wraps his free arm around the backs of Hux’s thighs, almost knocking him over the with the force of his clumsy grip. He’s still stroking his cock long after it must have grown uncomfortably sensitive. 

Hux sinks to his knees and puts his hand over Ren’s, helping him to uncurl his fingers. They’re both kneeling in Ren’s come, the water pushing it around and thinning it until it’s gone. Ren’s breath is hot, and he tastes a little bitter when they kiss, like the mouthpiece of the vocoder. Hux remembers the taste well. Like cigarettes and whiskey, it’s something that shouldn’t be an instant comfort but is, and he lets himself get drunk on it, high and fuzzy and unable to tell how much time has passed with Ren’s tongue sliding against his, only that his knees ache and the hot water ration has run out. 

“Turn the--” Hux says, and before he can finish the Force snaps the water off. “Right.” Hux slumps forward again, closes his eyes and lets his parted lips rest against Ren’s. “Thank you, good, just-- Help me up, let’s get out of here.” 

If it had ever been that easy they would have been gone long ago. Ren is powerful, Hux is smart, but they share a weakness that involves needing infrastructure. Hux doesn’t want to reinvent the galaxy from scratch. Nor does Ren. They both want to turn back time and recreate the past, with a few alterations. Like crawling into a grave: it’s warm in there, comforting in a way that the fool’s hope of something better has not been.  

So they only make it as far as Hux’s bed. Under the blankets, in the dark, Hux gathers Ren against him and talks about the past year, all the grand plans and little annoyances, everything he could never say to anyone else. He rubs his palm over Ren’s short hair as he talks. The texture isn’t bad: like the wound on Ren’s side, it means something about survival, and there’s a warmth beneath it that rises to meet Hux’s touch. 

“What about sleep?” Ren asks after he’s interrupted Hux in mid-sentence to kiss him, his lips moving against Hux’s. 

“Sleep?” Hux says, with dread. He’s not ready. This will be over too soon. 

“You once-- You told me you couldn’t sleep when I wasn’t here. When I was away. You must have learned, though. I had dreams that you didn’t. You turned into some kind of creature, without me. A sleepless thing, a droid with skin.” 

“Well then. You worried about me, too. I was afraid--” Hux cuts himself off there, wishing he hadn’t phrased it like that. He touches Ren’s jutting nose, his awkward chin, his eyelids and lashes. “You could tell me about it,” he says, whispering. As if they’re being watched. He’s never understood how it works, the extent of Snoke’s unseen observation. 

“The training?”

“Yes, Ren.”

“It would bore you.” 

“I assure you, it wouldn’t.” 

Ren shuffles closer. Their knees are touching, and their foreheads. Hux won’t be able to stay awake much longer unless he drags himself out of bed and takes a dose of stimulants. Though these lazy minutes are precious, he’d rather fall asleep like this, at least not knowing for certain that Ren won’t be here when he wakes up.

“It’s about becoming a more and more efficient tool,” Ren says. “And less a person. Same as your training.” 

Hux opens his mouth to refute this. Ren kisses him before he can, and in it Hux tastes how tired Ren is, too. Also how much and how long he’s wanted this sleep that is already closing over them. 

Hux wakes only once during the night, and not fully. Ren is there, humid under the blankets when Hux thumps his hand onto Ren’s chest, checking his solidity. Ren grunts and presses forward, nudging his face against Hux’s on the pillow. His hot breath is briefly a comfort, then irritating enough to prompt Hux to roll over. He settles back into the cradle of Ren’s encircling arms, remembering this routine in some intrinsic way: uncomfortably intimate sleep that comes in fits and starts, interspersed with reminders that he’s not alone. 

Several hours before his next shift begins, Hux opens his eyes to find Ren dressing in the near-dark. For a while he lies there watching Ren from beneath heavy eyelids, waiting to see if he’ll say anything at all. Ren picks up his helmet and turns toward the bed. 

“I’ll be back in two days,” he says. 

“Will you.”

“Yes. I finished a mission early, allowing me time to come here. I have another, but if it goes according to my plan, which it should--”

“Ren.” 

“What?”

“Does Snoke really know you’re here?”

Ren exhales through his nose. It’s a familiar sound, usually indicating that Ren has been caught in a lie. Hux sits up, feeling the chill in the room acutely as the blankets slide from his shoulders.  

“My training is complete,” Ren says. He’s angry, shoulders tight. “I am given-- He was-- There was no specific directive not to come here.”

“You told me--”

“I know what I said! I didn’t want you making too much of it.” 

Hux considers this in silence. He feels both stunned and like he should have expected this-- A typical encounter with Ren, who is putting his gloves on with a scowl, maybe annoyed at their dampness. 

“You should seek treatment for your condition while I’m gone,” Ren says, now mumbling.

“Sorry? What condition?” 

“You’re depressed. Don’t you know?”

Hux scoffs, then sputters. “I’m _working_ ,” he says, narrowing his eyes at Ren when he looks up from his gloves. “Rebuilding after a disaster. It’s not exactly cheerful. Forgive me if I’m not skipping around loving life right now.”

“You used to love work. Now you don’t.” 

Ren crosses to the bed and kisses Hux on the forehead sharply. There’s something corrective about it, as if he’s trying to wake Hux during a boring lecture before the instructor catches him dozing off. He straightens, holding his helmet against his hip. 

“I suppose you think you’re the cure for my melancholy,” Hux says.

“You do need companionship. So I’ll be back in two days.”

“Oh, that’s why? For my sake? And what will Snoke say about it when he notices your joy rides to the _Finalizer_?” 

“He won’t.”

“Won’t what?”

“Notice.” 

Ren puts the helmet on, maybe to hide his eyes. Hux sees his throat bob when he swallows, before he arranges his cloak across his shoulders. 

“What are you doing?” Hux asks, suppressing the urge to scream this question. He feels something building within him, a sharp sort of interior knifing that he hadn’t realized he’d missed. It’s the stabbing feeling of caring again, or the start of it. 

“I’m leaving,” Ren says. The vocoder does less to obscure his voice now that Hux has spent an entire night with the softer version, the secret truth of it. “But only for two days.”

“I don’t mean-- I mean what are you _doing_ , defying Snoke?” 

“Just take care of yourself, General. Don’t worry about me.” 

Hux watches Ren go, wanting to ask what taking care of himself means. He’d forgotten, as it turns out. 

He tells himself he’s not following Ren’s instructions when he puts a special soothing cream on his sore ass, or when he reschedules a morning meeting so he can go to the officer’s gym. There’s a steam garden there with a view of the stars, plants from seven different complementary ecosystems cycling clean oxygen through the steam-thickened air, everything fragrant to the point of being cloying. 

Ren fucked Hux in this steam garden once, and somewhere toward the end Hux thought he would die of being overheated and short of breath, too excited and full and too open to the huffing beast above him. Then Ren licked his jaw, or shoved in deeper, or something, and Hux unlocked his sense of invincibility, laughed, threw his head back for a tilted look at the stars and wrapped his arms around Ren’s neck, held on for dear life. He remembers the curtain of Ren’s hair, how sweaty and oppressive it had felt around his face. 

When he opens his eyes to the stars he feels another kind of curtain pull back, widening his gaze. Ren didn’t come here to just fuck him or make him feel better. He’s defied Snoke, and he’s offered that defiance to Hux as kind of first step on a towering, potentially impossible staircase. At the top there is something blood-soaked and glorious, and Hux can feel his claws coming back out as a smile splits across his face like the answer to a question Ren asked on his way out the door. He wonders if Ren can hear it, or if he’s already too far away.

Regardless, he’ll be back in two days, and Hux understands now why there was no goodbye before. Ren didn’t have a plan then. His training was incomplete. Hux should have known that on the other side of his training there would not be a stripped-bare version of Ren but an enhanced one, whatever Snoke’s intentions were. No one who creates a monster should be arrogant enough to assume he can control it. Hux made that mistake with Starkiller. His smile widens as he rises, sweat streaking down the backs of his legs. If Snoke sees Ren as his monster, Hux has already won. 

_I’d go far with a friend like you_. 

 

**


End file.
